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eye3 hexicopter helps your DSLR take flight for $999
Your camera wants to take flight -- trust us, it does -- and an ambitious new project aims to make your DSLR's aeronautic ambitions a reality. The eye3 hexacopter is a six-armed carbon-fiber unmanned arial vehicle (UAV) that hopes to make aerial photography accessible to the masses. Designed by a couple with a hankering for robotics, the flying machine is modular (for easy repair) and navigates using a combination of Google Maps and open-source code. Those without a pilot license need not worry: the eye3 utilizes the oft-improving APM2 software for a "compact yet powerful" autopilot experience. The UAV can carry a payload of five to ten pounds, boasts three CPUs and has a 350-watt motor strapped to each tentacle. Fly past the break to watch a video from eye3's creators... get to the choppa'!
Parrot AR.Drone 2.0 full details leaked, 720p camera and new flight modes?
It was hard to miss the "2.0" branding over at Parrot's little aerodrome here at CES, but with nary a detail we were left speculation what the new major version number means. Now, though, we have some more details. A lot more details, actually. Over at AR Drone Flyers we've spotted what looks to be an official press release detailing everything about the new UAV, most notable being an improved 720p camera. You can apparently use this to record footage from the drone and even program it to fly in any direction automatically. In other words, this could be the low-cost aerial camera DIY extreme sports filmmakers have waited for. And, at $299 when it ships in Q2, it'll be quite close to affordable. You can check out a picture of the new drone above and read the full details in the seemingly official press release below. [Thanks, Symon Davis]
Quadrocopters don creepy eyes, build synthetic Christmas tree of envy (video)
First we let them play music, then they started juggling. Now quadrocopters are feeling emotions as well; namely, jealousy. One of Flying Machine Arena's dainty quadrocopters, nicknamed Juliet, was compelled to build its own synthetic Christmas tree after spying an authentic fir through a glass window. Sure, stacked bricks of festive foam seem innocent enough, but look into those ping-pong ball eyes and tell us you aren't a little worried that next year's "war on Christmas" will be the machine's war on humans. Fly past the break to see Juliet's envious construction project for yourself.
It's not a flying fish, it's a submarine-launched UAV
VTOL may be old news already, but here's another great USP for any UAV: the ability to launch from a submerged submarine. The technology is still in development, but the Navy wants to try it from periscope depth during exercises in the Pacific Ocean next year. If all goes to plan, a Switchblade folding-wing drone will be ejected from the submarine's trash disposal unit and then carried to the surface by an SLV ('submerged launch vehicle'), which will keep it dry, point it into the wind and then hurl it heavenwards so it can go a-snooping. Whether the experiment succeeds or fails, we've glimpsed a worrying possibility: submarines are capable of dumping their trash right into the ocean. Until now, we sort of assumed they took it home with them.
US Army's A160 Hummingbird drone-copter to don 1.8 gigapixel camera
Starting in July of 2012, the United States Army will deploy three Boeing A160 Hummingbird drones to Afghanistan as part of a one-year trial program. Unlike the Predator drones already in combat, the A160 is a rotor-based aircraft capable of vertical take-offs and landings. What's more, the craft will be affixed with the DARPA-developed ARGUS-IS imaging system -- which boasts a 1.8 gigapixel camera the Army says can "track people and vehicles from altitudes above 20,000 feet." The A160 Hummingbird platform will provide the Army with the ability and flexibility to: take off and land without a runway; fly for twelve hours or more without refueling; and monitor up to 65 enemies of the State simultaneously. Test flights of the unmanned chopper are scheduled for early 2012 in Arizona, but residents hoping to get a glimpse of the A160 in action best have great eyesight -- the ARGUS-IS system can see targets from almost 25 miles down range. Oh, and don't forget to smile when you look up. You want to look your best for the eye in the sky, right?
Drone Station lets you pilot an AR.Drone with your Mac
Drone Station won't actually have you tilting your MacBook to pilot the recreational quadrocopter around your hood but, when neither the little, small, wee smartphone nor the great, huge Surface will do -- a mid-sized laptop may be just right. The on screen HUD displays all the information you'll need to accurately fly the AR.Drone and the app is compatible with a broad array of external controllers, including the Wii Nunchuk and Balance Board. While you're using a game pad to soar through the sky, your computer can actually record video from the UAV's on-board cameras, so you can document your hijinks or perform some reconnaissance on that shady neighbor kid. Hit up the source link for more info and check out the Mac App Store to download it now for $10.
Bigpoint's €1000 space drone sale clarified
Last week we told you about Bigpoint's eyebrow-raising sale of a €1,000 virtual space drone. Gamesbrief recently updated its news posting after its readers chimed in with a healthy dose of skepticism regarding the numbers involved in the supposed windfall. As it turns out, said numbers are likely still impressive, but rather less impressive than the €2 million ($2.7 million) initially surmised. Gamesbrief's correction post states that the drone cannot be bought for real cash, and instead must be purchased with DarkOrbit's Uridium currency, which is available for real money or earned in game. Bigpoint has in fact sold 2,000 of the drones, but not at a direct cost of €1,000 each. "I no longer think that you can multiply 2,000 10th Drones sold times €1,000 to work out how much revenue Bigpoint made from this single item," Gamesbrief's Nicholas Lovell writes.
First manned multicopter takes flight, brave human sits amidst blades (video)
What could have ended in human chop suey, instead resulted in victory for German engineers at e-volo as they successfully completed the first manned flight of an electric multicopter. The human death trap multicopter uses multiple mini helicopters to lift the passenger upwards -- who's snuggled in the center of the carnage, firmly strapped to a squishy exercise ball. Like an UAV, the hovering device is controlled via radio control from the ground -- talk about trusting. The passenger was able to hold on for one minute and 30-second of flight victory, causing raucous celebrations from the Wright brothers in aviation heaven. Click past the break for the video.
Mesa Robotics' mini-tank is perfectly happy on point (video)
The Acer ground-bot from Mesa Robotics does way more than your average 4,500-pound semi-autonomous mule. In addition to carrying kit and providing that extra bit of ballistic steel-deflecting cover, it also scans for IEDs using ground-penetrating radar and then autonomously switches into "flail" mode when it finds one -- digging up and detonating that critter with barely a break in its 6MPH stride. Did we mention it also acts as a landing pad for small drones? No? That's because the video after the break says it all. Cue obligatory guitars, game controllers and armchair gung-ho.
German video effects company builds camera drone for the Red Epic
Red Epic + Flying drone = The sort of geek math you can't help but wish you'd come up with yourself. German VFX company OMStudios decided to mount Red's super-camera into a custom Octocopter to record footage in resolutions up to 5K. As cool as the setup is, there's a practical purpose: not only is it far cheaper than renting a crane, it can also climb up to 150 meters -- making it just high enough to fly over Hollywood's tallest man, Tom Cruise. Since it's highly unlikely we'll ever get to play with one of these, we'll just have to point you to the video after the break and hope that no catastrophic power failures take place halfway through any real-world shoots. [Thanks, Jeremias]
iPhone app controls drone aircraft 3,000 miles away
At the present time, flying unmanned drone aircraft requires a skilled operator and a lot of equipment. Engineers at the Boeing Company and researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology want to change all of that and make it possible for regular people to control aircraft from a handheld device like an iPhone. In the Boeing video shown below, an operator in Seattle is tapping and swiping on the screen of an iPhone and flying a tethered drone on a baseball field at MIT in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The idea of the experiment is not to have iPhone owners wage war, but to "allow drones to be used more effectively for tasks that are dirty or dangerous, as well as for missions that may be too long and tedious to have a human be continuously at the controls." The experimental app features two modes of operation. The first lets the operator set a path for the drone to follow by tapping waypoints on a map displayed on the iPhone screen, while the second mode uses a camera on the drone and "nudge controls" to send the aircraft in the desired direction. The project is a collaboration between the aerospace giant and MIT, and a fascinating look at how iPhone apps are being developed for use by the military.
Scientists build WiFi hunter-killer drone and call it SkyNET... Viene Tormenta!
You'd think scientists would proscribe certain names for their inventions -- you wouldn't be taken seriously if your supercomputer was called HAL 9000, WOPR or Proteus IV would you? Well, a team from the Stevens Institute of Technology isn't listening, because it's developing an aerial drone and calling it SkyNET. A Linux box, strapped to a Parrot A.R. Drone, can fly within range of your home wireless network and electronically attack it from the air. Whilst internet-only attacks are traceable to some extent, drone attacks are difficult to detect until it's too late -- you'd have to catch it in the act and chase it off with a long-handled pitchfork, or something. The team is working on refining the technology to make it cheaper than the $600 it currently costs and advise that people toughen up their domestic wireless security. We advise they stop pushing us ever closer towards the Robopocalypse.
EVE Evolved: Flying the Dominix
Of all the ships I've flown over the years in EVE Online, the Gallente Dominix remains one of my absolute favourites. It's big, it's slow, and it looks like an upside-down mouldy shoe, but it's forever been one of the most versatile battleships in the game. With a massive bonus of 10% to drone damage and hitpoints per level of the Gallente Battleship skill, the Dominix can easily deal around 500 damage per second just with its drones. It can take on targets of any size by switching to medium or light drones and can field a full rack of six railguns or blasters to push its damage even higher. In PvE, the Dominix can be set up as a long-range damage platform for blitzing missions, a salvaging platform relying only on drone damage, or even a heavily tanked ship that will take all the damage while your drones automatically kill everything in sight. For PvP, the Dominix can be used for short-range damage, sniping, remote repair support, electronic warfare support, spider-tanking, capacitor warfare, and other roles. It can shield tank or armour tank and can even be set up with a reasonable hull tank for a surprise factor. In this week's EVE Evolved, I give two viable PvE fittings for the Dominix and two of my favourite PvP setups, along with advice on how to use each setup to its fullest.
DARPA's Maple leaf Remote Control drone takes first flight (video)
After five years behind locked doors, researchers at Lockheed Martin's Intelligent Robotics Laboratories in New Jersey have emerged with a working prototype of the "Samarai," a tiny DARPA-commissioned surveillance drone. The nano air vehicles (NAVs), modeled after falling Maple leaf seeds, are designed to be super light weight and agile for vertical lift off, hovering, and navigation in tight spaces. Like your favorite $5 Subway sammie, these surveillance bots are a foot long, but instead of being shoveled in your mouth, they're thrown like boomerangs into flight and controlled using a tablet app or a basic remote. These eyes in the sky will officially launch next week at the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International Conference, but until then you can check out the video of their first flight below. Update: Lockheed Martin wrote in to let us know that although originally commissioned by DARPA, this project is currently funded internally. Lockheed also noted that the flight recorded in the video is only a test flight, rather than a first flight for the Samarai.
Wireless snooping WASP drone knows you want extra jalapeños, no sliced tomato
This fearsome contraption is the handiwork of a couple of amateur DEFCON-types who reckoned that any self-respecting spy plane ought to be able to impersonate cellphone towers. And that's exactly what the Wireless Aerial Surveillance Platform does -- it tricks AT&T and T-Mobile handsets into connecting to it, then re-routes the incoming calls via VOIP so they don't drop, while simultaneously recording all conversations to 32GB of onboard storage. It can also handle a bit of WiFi snooping on the side, thanks to a Linux-based hacking toolkit and a 340 million word dictionary for guessing passwords. What's more, the WASP apparently achieves all of this without breaking a single FCC regulation. So, er, that's fine then. Oh yeah, and we don't want any of that stuffed crust nonsense, you hear?
Quadrocopters: blooper reel edition
We have a gut feeling this is the video that'll be playing when 'the hive' takes over -- a sentimental, 'look how far we've come' victory reel for the Quadrotor nation. But for now, let's just keep the focus on the softer side of our future nemesis' training-room foibles. Playing like an über-geek version of America's Funniest Home Videos, we admit we cracked a smile watching these insect-like bots from the University of Pennsylvania's GRASP Lab take a few hard knocks in the humility ring. Fear of the swarm aside, it's a humorous twist on an otherwise droning research project. The take away? Schadenfreude -- it's not just for humans. [Thanks, Daniel]
Camera-equipped hexacopter turns summer vacation videos into aerial masterworks (video)
Wakeboarding is so 2005. Wakeboarding with a camera-packing six-rotor MikroKopter tracking your every jump and belly flop? Now that sounds like something we can get behind. The folks over at MikroKopter have renewed our interest in the sport by mounting a FollowMe transmitter (which lets the drone track your every move), along with a GoPro camera to one watersportsman's helmet. They then sent a hexacopter drone, equipped with a Canon T2i, into the air to follow the boarder as he rode across the water. The resulting video definitely puts any and all of our family vacation videos to shame. High-flying video evidence awaits you after the break.
Parrot AR.Drone floats into damaged New Zealand cathedral, returns with haunting video
Whenever disaster strikes, robots are among the first to scope out the damage. Rarely, however, do they return with footage as eerie as what this Parrot AR.Drone recorded in Christchurch, New Zealand. In the wake of Monday's 6.0-magnitude earthquake, engineers sent the $500 bot into the city's Cathedral of the Blessed Sacrament -- a 106-year-old Roman Catholic church that had sustained significant damage, rendering it too dangerous for humans to enter. The iPad-controlled quadrocopter swooped in and captured rather depressing images of the cathedral's battered interior. The video's quality may be low, but its creepy quotient is high: shattered stained-glass windows, piles of debris, stray pieces of iconography -- it's all quite heavy. Head past the break to see it for yourself. [Thanks, Ross]
Japanese ball drone knows how to make an entrance (video)
Japan's Ministry of Defense is pretty good at its hovering drones, but we're not entirely convinced that this one will be fit for purpose. The RC reconnaissance scout reminds us of a spherical Iain M. Banks Culture drone, which is neat, except that this one's more conspicuous, dies after just eight minutes and was constructed not by an intergalactic artificial consciousness, but by a bunch of geeks who went foraging for parts in Akihabara. Nevertheless, it can do 40MPH and is surprisingly agile, as you'll see in the video -- watch out for the kissogram moment.
Maker Faire 2011, in pictures: Arduinos, Androids, and angry robots (video)
The rapture has come and gone, but the Maker Faire powers on. Despite warnings of a May 21st doomsday, folks came out in droves for the annual celebration of all things DIY, and we were there to bring you the best in homespun inventions. This year's Maker Faire was light on robots and big on corporate sponsorship. Among the giants supporting the little guys were Google, ASUS, and HP, but El Goog's presence extended beyond its dedicated tents. The new Android ADK was big with at-home tinkerers this year, spawning a number of little robots and at least one DIY alternative. Perhaps no other trend proved more pervasive than 3D printing, however -- every time we turned around there was another MakerBot or RapMan pumping out everything from statuettes of attendees to cutesy salt shakers. There were robotic building blocks, a Heineken-themed R2-D2, DIY drones, custom keyboards, and a ton of repurposed gadgets, but it was an arena of destructo-bots, tucked away in the farthest corner of the San Mateo County Event Center, that really blew us away. We came away sunburned and bedraggled, but lucky for you, we did all the dirty work so you don't have to. To see what made this year's Maker Faire, hop on past the break for a video of our favorite DIY finds. %Gallery-124165% Myriam Joire contributed to this report.
